The syncategorematic treatment of predicates
pp. 61-80
in: Jaysankar Lal Shaw (ed), Analytical philosophy in comparative perspective, Berlin, Springer, 1985Abstract
In Philosophv of Logic. Quine approvingly describes a use of the categorematic-syncategorematic dichotomy in which the latter is equated with the distinction between expressions which are names and expressions which are not names. He then says that "What distinguishes a name is that it can stand coherently in the place of a variable in predication, and will yield true results when used to instantiate true universal quantifications."1 That statement is followed immediately by the claim that "Predicates are not names". We can therefore safely avail ourselves of Küng"s terminology and agree with him that "On the view of Quine and Goodman predicate signs can be regarded as syncategorematic".2
